


Muscle Memory

by Nebulad



Series: Dirty Wastelander [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She rolled over to try and find the Paladin in the dark, and could vaguely make out his shape sitting on a pile of rubble and cradling his head in his hands. His gun was in his lap and he didn’t move even as she shimmied out of her sleeping bag and over to him. “Danse?” she asked carefully, and he jumped a little, trying to right himself. He really hadn’t noticed her approach.</p><p>“Apologies, soldier-”</p><p>“Dag,” she corrected him, and his face pulled into a terse half-smile. She would have thought he was angry with her, but… she read his expression as more pained than irate. “Does your head hurt?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Muscle Memory

Dag’s internal clock was spot on even without Danse to prompt her to wake up for her watch. They were camping in the ruins, which brought on the necessity for strict lookout times- they couldn’t afford grogginess, not with raiders and supermutants cutting the rubble like sharks. Danse, being the more… disciplined one between them, was usually very good at keeping track of shifts and trading up when they were over.

And yet, he hadn’t woken her up. The moon was hanging heavy and vaguely green over the centre of the sky (marked by some building or another- she didn’t quite know how Danse decided on timing, but she knew it never changed) and this event was usually marked with Danse’s hand on her side, shortly but very gently shaking her awake. Momentary panic spiked through her- the Paladin wasn’t the type to simply _forget_ things, which stood to reason that something bad was happening.

She rolled over to try and find him in the dark, and could vaguely make out his shape sitting on a pile of rubble and cradling his head in his hands. His gun was in his lap and he didn’t move even as she shimmied out of her sleeping bag and over to him. “Danse?” she asked carefully, and he jumped a little, trying to right himself. He really hadn’t noticed her approach.

“Apologies, soldier-”

“Dag,” she corrected him, and his face pulled into a terse half-smile. She would have thought he was angry with her, but… she read his expression as more _pained_ than _irate._ “Does your head hurt?” She wasn’t going to admit it out loud, but one of the engineers had been getting on her damn nerves about her rank: _how many field officers does it take to hack a terminal? Two: one to lock themselves out of it, and one to report back to the Prydwen to pick up a scribe._ She’d decided to teach her a little something and hack through a firewall, and the engineer had chosen Knight-Captain Cade’s terminal…. so technically, Dag wasn’t _guessing_ at Danse’s condition.

“Yes,” he said, and she felt weirdly like he was giving her a report. It was a short answer but he didn’t seem willing to elaborate.

“If I could…?” she asked, holding out her hands. He looked at her carefully for a moment, then nodded slowly. She slid off her gloves and reached out for his head- Nate had suffered from PTSD too. She couldn’t always help with it- hell, sometimes she couldn’t even be near him because it was too much for him to process- but there had been a few rare occasions where she did find herself useful. Nate hadn’t liked to take pills, always afraid that if he didn’t feel the pain then he wouldn’t know how injured he was, so she’d researched tirelessly for natural remedies for headaches.

Nate had always liked the massage option best because it grounded him in the present. She… wasn’t sure about Danse, honestly, but she also didn’t think they were going to accidentally stumble upon any of the aromatic treatments in the ruins of Boston.

She tried to shift them into a less awkward position as her fingertips gingerly touched his temples _(the temporalis muscles,_ she remembered reading, which had required a whole other search on individual head and face muscles). Danse was staring at her and she tried not to look too uncomfortable- he didn’t _mean_ to, she knew, and probably didn’t even realize that his beer bottle brown eyes could double as lasers if he really put his mind to it.

Maybe that was just her, though.

He only really relaxed when she got to his jaw muscles, just under his lower jaw bone. Nate’s headaches were usually abated around the eyes, but she knew where to look like a muscle memory. Danse sighed audibly and leaned down a little _(thank god, because he was a very large man and Dag could only reach upwards for so long)_. “Is that better?” she asked habitually.

“Yes,” but this time it didn’t sound like he was being dodgy so Cade didn’t yank him from duty. “Do you… have headaches?” he asked carefully. She noted it for later- he was being careful about mentioning them, a sensitive topic. Nate had been fiercely vocal about his condition, hoping to improve the lives of other soldiers; not that she didn’t think Danse wanted to, but he seemed less prepared to cope.

Of course, Nate had a suburban home, a spouse, a child, and a steady supply of food and water.

“My husband did,” she said, working her knuckles down towards his ears. She did too, but they were more… recent. “He saw more combat than me, though. They had me pegged for legal department pretty soon after I enlisted.” Maybe she would mention her own later, but she got the sense that Danse was asking where she had learned headache therapy.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, and she tilted his head up a bit so he’d look at her.

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “I want to talk about him. He was a good man and if I’m going to be the only person left to carry his memory, then I’m going to share it.” It hurt less and less every day, but she attributed that mostly to a weird form of disassociation she was going through. Every day she pulled further away from _suburban mother and wife trying to rebuild a post-military life with her husband;_ that woman couldn’t exist alongside _woman who impulse enlisted into the closest thing left to the army because she didn’t understand how to exist in the new world._

“That’s an.... admirable attitude,” he said carefully, his eyes barely keeping open. She felt a little strange, suddenly- they were very close and it seemed awful of her to suddenly get nervous about how she could feel his pulse and breath because the poor man was in pain and very clearly unused to affection not rooted in duty and decorum.

“It gets me through the day,” she said, dropping her hands. He huffed out a breath that felt almost like disappointment, but he hadn’t drawn _away_ from her yet so at least she could take solace in the fact that she wasn’t making her superior officer uncomfortable…

And rank be damned, she didn’t want Danse to feel ill at ease around her.

“Sleeping can also be beneficial to easing headache pain,” she said quietly, flexing her fingers. She realized abruptly that she’d taken his hands, and dropped them immediately. _That_ was the force of habit. She’d never done anything like this for anyone but Nate, and he had occasionally needed reassurance from his wife that he wasn’t ruining their relationship by being mentally ill- holding his hands had been physical affection that wasn’t overwhelming for him.

Danse was tired, she decided. He’d hardly noticed his subordinate running her thumbs across his knuckles- or maybe he was just too polite to mention it.

“I’ll try that, then. Thank-you, Dagna.” Danse stood up, his hand brushing across his jaw as if he were trying to find the spots she’d been pushing on, and moved over to the sleeping bags. Dag clutched her gun in her hands- she wondered if he knew that it was the one he’d given her through all the mods she’d added- and turned her head to begin scoping the horizon.

He’d used her full name, but it was… something.

 

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry im still trying to figure out how the fuck to write danse, so here's this. they were supposed to kiss but I found myself fighting an internal battle where it was "it would be adorable" vs "Danse would literally never do that" and im struggling.


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